Reflections on Adoptive Parenting: by a Grateful Recovering Know-It-All

By Maria E Piantanida

At the age of 38, the author and her husband adopted an 11 year old boy.  During the early years of their life together, the author wrote short vignettes about moments that challenged her assumptions about parenting.  Many of the vignettes are reflections on ironic discrepancies between actually being a parent and what she had lea

• Language: English
• Publisher: Learning Moments Press
• Release date: Jul 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9780997648874

Book preview

THE BEGINNING

When I was in the fairly early stages of contemplating parenthood, I talked with a close and trusted friend. After I explained that my husband and I were thinking of adopting a child, she responded, Maria, you have to understand that becoming a parent is not just a change in your life. It changes your life—COMPLETELY AND FOREVER! Because I respected my friend’s insight into the nature of life, and because her statement held the ring of a fundamental human truth, I nodded knowingly and agreed that it must be so.

In the spring of 1985, my husband and I completed the home study process to prepare ourselves for the adoption of an older child. The eight week course consisted of information about children waiting for placement, introspective exercises on our expectations for adoption, parenting and family, and stories about the adoption experience shared by several adoptive parents. We were very impressed by the thoroughness of the program, conscientiously completed all exercises, and supplemented the formal home study course with extensive reading and informal discussions and interactions with experienced adoptive families. We felt well prepared for our new parental responsibilities and our new family. That fall, my husband and I became the proud parents of a 4’8, 85 pound bouncing baby" boy.

On November 22 we went to pick up our new son. On November 23 we arrived home. On November 24 our lives turned upside down and inside out. Nothing we had heard, read, thought about or learned had prepared us for the enormous change our lives were undergoing.

I can remember as though it were yesterday, the first day my husband returned to work, and I stayed home alone with our son. About 4:00 in the afternoon, I went to our bedroom, locked the door, threw myself on the bed and sobbed in despair for a good 30 minutes. What have I done? What have I done to us? I wailed to the universe.

My despair was not in response to anything my son had done or refused to do. He had been pleasant and cooperative all day. He had entertained himself in front of the television and placed no demands on me, other than a completely reasonable expectation that I would prepare something edible for lunch. No, the despair came from the overwhelming realization that my friend was right. My life had changed—forever. Neither my husband nor I would ever be the same again. For that matter, neither would our son. And none of us had any idea at all of what the future held in store for us as a fragile, newly forming family.

WHERE DO CHILDREN COME FROM?

No, this isn’t a lesson in the basic facts of life. It speaks to the point that in any couple, the idea of adoption will occur first to one partner who will then raise the possibility for consideration. In my case, I was the dragger, and Earl was the draggee.

When Earl and I married, we agreed that we did not want to have children. He was already a father of three from his first marriage, and I was a committed career woman with no interest in children. And so it remained for five years, until one beautiful spring day in 1984. I was driving out of the parking garage at the hospital where I worked, when suddenly I started thinking about my father who had died six years earlier. Out of nowhere came the thought, Who will remember me when I’m gone? Thus, the seed of parenthood was planted.

FAMILY LEGACIES - PART 1

Christine, the caseworker who ran our adoption preparation class, admonished all of us eager would-be parents, Keep in mind that these children will bring different values into your home. These exercise sheets will help you think about what values matter most to you. Think carefully about what you can and cannot live with. Think about whether you can accept and love a child who does not share your values.

My grandparents emigrated from Italy to the United States at a time when Italians experienced considerable social discrimination, a time of ethnic slurs and rampant prejudice. It was a time when immigrants sacrificed everything to give their children a more prosperous future. I never knew my grandparents, but I grew up with their legacy.

From earliest childhood, I learned that education was the most important endeavor one could pursue. Education was the way out of grinding poverty and bitter discrimination. Education was hope; education was the future.

I grew up with stories of my father, dead on his feet, working in the steel mills at night so that he could finish school during the day. Stories of my father sacrificing his dream of becoming a chemist for a practical career as a pharmacist so that he could earn enough money to send his younger sisters to